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Birth of John Baptist 2012 Sunday 24th June, 2012 Collect Almighty God, by Whose providence Your servant John the Baptist was wonderfully born, and sent to prepare the way for Your Son our Saviour by preaching a baptism of repentance; make us so to follow his teaching and holy life that we may repent, and following his example, may constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake ; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever Amen Old Testament Lesson Isaiah 49: 1 – 6 Listen to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away! The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified." But I said, "I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God." And now the LORD says, Who formed me in the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, and that Israel might be gathered to Him, for I am honoured in the sight of the LORD, and my God has become my strength -- He says, "It is too light a thing that you should be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.“ For the Epistle Acts 13: 22 – 26 When He had removed him, he made David their king. In his testimony about him He said, 'I have found David, son of Jesse, to be a man after My heart, who will carry out all My wishes.' Of this man's posterity God has brought to Israel a Saviour, Jesus, as He promised; before his coming John had already proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was finishing his work, he said, 'What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but one is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of the sandals on his feet." "My brothers, you descendants of Abraham's family, and others who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent. Gospel St. Luke 1: 57 ff Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, "No; he is to be called John." They said to her, "None of your relatives has this name." Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, "His name is John." And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. All who heard them pondered them and said, "What then will this child become?" For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him. The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel. NOTES ON THE READINGS Old Testament One is left with the suspicion that this reading will go right over the heads of people as they listen, which is an enormous pity indeed. This comment is made simply because when a person is unaware of the situation at the time the prophet wrote, there could be little to show the potency of the words. Here the prophet is stating a profound truth that came to him as the result of questioning God. Rarely a bad thing to do, as long as you listen for the answer. The southern kingdom had been destroyed, along with Temple and Jerusalem, and anyone who was anyone was taken into exile in Babylon. For most people then, it was ‘end of story, end of line.’ No possibility of future lay in front of them. It must have been totally devastating. However the prophet had a rather wider vision of what was happening. That wider vision came from looking back further over Israel’s life and history, and in this very passage reminded people that their role was not simply to maintain an apparently disappearing religion, but was to be servants to the world at large. ‘It is too small a thing’ must have come like a hit from a sledge hammer, and made them see that God did not need to strong and viable nation to achieve His goal, but a faithful people who would simply get on with the job. Whenever the Church is strong, then in fact it is weak for it loses its way in the power struggle. When the Church is weak, then it sees the clear need to be true to its charter, -- and then it is strong! For the Epistle It was only last week that we watched as Saul was in process of being replaced as King but a kid who was a mere shepherd. Do not expect God to be very concerned about having this world’s heavies on side. And the process is repeated in the life of John the Baptist, ..... as in those of Mary and Joseph as well. God tends to work with the little people of this world GOSPEL What a delightfully low-key tale this is of John’s circumcision! Neither fuss nor bother ruled as that faithful little family gathered for such an important rite. And note the reference to John being in the desert until his ministry began. It is from that statement and John’s theological views that the assumption has been made that John spent much of his years with the Qumran sect, the Essenes. NOTES FOR A SERMON It is not always the easiest for us to link present issues of life and faith with events and incidents of the distant Biblical past, and even harder - seems to me! – for modern people even to know let alone connect past history with modern events. That’s a long sentence with a significant focus. Let me explain. A year or so after our youngest daughter left High School, I read a presentation book she was given for her efforts in Year 12. It was a fascinating book, writing Australian history from the mid 1860s up to the then present time (mid 1980s. I was reading at the time of the 1987 financial crisis, and was stunned at what I was reading. The book recorded a remarkably similar financial collapse of exactly a century before because of EXACTLY the same bases of land values being grossly overpriced, along with other similar rorts. It seems the old adage is true: the only lesson we learn from history is that we don’t ever learn the lessons of history. Most of them stems from the fact that modern people seem to have remarkably short memories, or perhaps even none at all. (I still suspect that climate change theories are based on insufficient or even incorrect evidence. I await definitive proof of it all.) Let’s go back to the beginning, to today’s readings, and to that remarkable and critical first lesson. Isaiah. (Gee I would love to have a long discussion with that person who wrote Chapter 49! B4rilliant and eternal stuff! Read it again if you would. Realize that the author is in exile in Babylon with the rest of the Hebrew displaced ones, after having gone through a crisis of enormous proportion. Facing them, as far as they saw, was the end of Jahweh, the end of Judaism, the end of Israel, the end of all that they valued so highly, even if they ignored much of it much of the time. End of the road. Boyo! Full stop, Amen. Everyone knew that if ever or whenever the god’s Temple was destroyed, (remember Samson?) that god was cactus, kaput! Dead and gone. You are left on your own. That was the current theology, and everyone knew it. Except some of the prophets. And Isaiah was one of them. He had the hide to question the process, to argue with God and to determine what really the kerfuffle was all about. He could not imagine that God would have gone to all that trouble with argumentative, murmuring people for nothing. So what the hell was God on about anyrate? Always a good question: before you get all self- focussed and ask ‘why me?’ ask the wiser, better question ‘what are you saying to me, Lord?’ Isaiah’s answer came from looking back over Israel’s history from where people were hurting right there and then. All is in question, nothing sacrosanct. Israel had developed a religion that stultified a wide-ranging, ;life giving Faith into a narrow religion of control and management. The nation had already had one cataclysm that destroyed the Northern Kingdom, a fate brought about not by God’s punishment, but by their refusal to live in love, compassion, (true) justice and integrity, and caring about each other. No one seemed to learn from that because no one took responsibility for that. So here is Stage 2. No, the Exile was not the end, though it could have been. It was ‘Time Out,’ so to speak. Stop and think, you lot, and ponder the reason for this. It is not a matter of defending your religion; it is a matter of re-evaluating what that Faith is about. ‘It is too light a thing that you should be My servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.“ Here was no end – it was a fresh beginning if they dared to take hold of it all. Do you begin to see? Now please put two and two together. The prophet was making it quite clear that here was no end to Judaism, no end to Jahweh, but time for God’s People to return to the original emphasis of their calling from Abraham on. ‘Light to the nations’ was the latest way of expressing ‘a blessing to all peoples.’ Here was nothing new, here was a simple challenge to go back to grass roots ... and then get on with the job. Sadly, Israel was not all that crash-hot at that restored role, which meant that, several centuries later, a new messiah was to come, with the same old message and challenge and calling. Now to 2012. Why is God allowing things to fall to bits (although most of the responsibility is ours of course.) This hiatus, like all previous ones in Hebrew and Christian history (and there have been lots of them!) is to stop and take stock and take up the original call and challenge and responsibility. We have been entrusted with the life-giving Gospel, for here and now rather more than heaven to come! And as I often report, when the Church is (seen as) strong, it is at its weakest. Neither Church nor Faith is a matter of strength and power. It is a matter of serving a hurting and damaged world of people. Serving. There is no other way to be that ‘light to the nations.’ It is an offer not a demand, it is a choice, not a requirement. It looks for all the world like weakness, yet it is significant, relevant and life- and world-changing. And all at little or not cost ... except to human pride and sometimes stupidity.